So why does Genesis provide us with the material found in Genesis 1 – 11? These chapters aren’t obviously about God’s self-revelation.
Genesis tells the story of how God created humankind in fellowship with him, but also relates how that relationship was destroyed by the Fall. The destruction of all but Noah and his family in the flood gave humanity a second opportunity to maintain a relationship, but again sin interfered.
The primeval history concludes with the important account of the Tower of Babel. Urbanization in Mesopotamia had provided fertile ground for the development of a new paganism aptly represented in the symbolism of the ziggurat. The Tower of Babel represented the definitive formulation of a brand of paganism that pervaded the ancient Near East in which mythologized deity was portrayed as having all the foibles of humanity. In so doing, humanity remade deity in its own image.
Elsewhere, Walton notes that the stairstep structure of the ziggurat was not to allow mankind to reach heaven but to facilitate the gods’ coming to earth.
To the pagans, the gods had to be coerced to care about mere humans. It was up to humans to take the initiative to invite the gods to earth — rather than the True God taking the initiative to be known among his people.
The pagans had severely distorted the image of God. A correction was necessary.
The perception of God that swept the ancient world was incapable of providing a sound basis for a relationship with the one true God. The result was the need for God to vouchsafe an accurate revelation of himself. He therefore instituted a revelatory program by means of the covenant.
In short, Genesis 1 – 11 explains what happens when God is not sufficiently known. Why did the world rebel at the time of Noah? Why build the Tower of Babel? It was all because God was inadequately known.
Eden existed at a time and place where man had intimate knowledge of God. Man walked with God in the Garden in the cool of the morning. Sin had not yet obscured God’s image from our view.
But once sin entered, God became harder to see. Therefore, it became necessary that God himself take the initiative. Man had become so distant from God that only God could take the first step.
Jay, your last sentence is a great summation. I recommend to other readers, GOD IN SEARCH OF MAN, by Abraham J. Heschel. A beautiful work. He takes Biblical truths and molds them into sheer poetry of how God has always been reaching out to us.
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot JAY.
seems to me that two things are given specially in Genesis one anyway.
God is love God is good and God never changes. oops that’s three.
God said the creation was very good.
God is not stupid.
I believe you took into consideration all the probabilities that this good could take on.good or evil from the cosmic order Or the cosmic to interact with his very good to put a wrench in the gear of creationto sort of kind of fracture it or to be a little more specific can’t remember that word post it later.which allows for free choice.
Love is responsible so it would be God’s fix for creation taking into consideration every possibility so that what is left is a remnant according to grace.
I’ll get that new word blessings rich Bible class starting
start
“To the pagans, the gods had to be coerced to care about mere humans. ……The pagans had severely distorted the image of God. A correction was necessary.”
Are things much different today in some branches of modern Christianity? Could this be one reason why Christianity is shrinking? Perhaps a return to first principles would help e.g. God does hear prayers, God is not a mean ogre out to get people and is just waiting on you to make a mistake.
tha t word through the spirit of loveis a fractal as in fractal geometry I know you’d like that one J.
So once the cosmic forces enter into the world for creation and create a deviation from God’s good God’s.
good becomes a fractal and God is responsible or loves the creation and its purpose and is able to account for all deviation and through interventionS throughout the history of man to exhibit himself His good his love his faithfulness and his kindness. to deliver his creation into the eternal community of the faithFull Seed.by
dwelling in the faithful community through his spirit.after the world has frustrated itself totally to him
GOD’S GOOD BEING RESTORED???? AND THE NEW COSMIC ORDER
8:5 The place where they serve is4 a sketch5 and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, just as Moses was warned by God as he was about to complete the tabernacle. For he says, “See that you make everything according to the design6 shown to you on the mountain.”7
5:8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered.14 5:9 And by being perfected in this way,
he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,
5:10 and he was designated15 by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek.16
The Need to Move on to Maturity
5:11 On this topic we have much to say17 and it is difficult to explain,
you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances.
. 5:13 For everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced
in the message of righteousness, because he is an infant
. 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, whose perceptions are trained by
practice to discern both good and evil.
THE NEW COSMOS AWAITES
Hebrews 9
9:11 But now Christ has come15 as the high priest of the good things to come. He passed through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands,
that is, not of this creation,
9:23 So it was necessary for the sketches25 of the things in heaven to be purified with these sacrifices,
26 but the heavenly things themselves required27 better sacrifices than these.
9:24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands – the representation28 of the true sanctuary29
– but into heaven itself, and he appears now in God’s presence for us.
9:25 And he did not enter to offer30 himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the sanctuary year after year with blood that is not his own, 9:26 for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the consummation of the ages to put away sin by his sacrifice. 9:27 And just as people31 are appointed to die once, and then to face judgment,32 9:28 so also, after Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many,33 to those who eagerly await him he will appear a second time, not to bear sin34 but to bring salvation.35
and of course we don’t want to forget about Romans 1 18 and 19 for the wrath of God is revealed
FRACTAL SIMPLY PUT
…The term “fractal” was first used by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975. Mandelbrot based it on the Latin frāctus meaning “broken” or “fractured”, and used it to extend the concept of theoretical fractional dimensions to geometric patterns in nature.[2]:405[6]
There is some disagreement amongst authorities about how the concept of a fractal should be formally defined. Mandelbrot himself summarized it as “beautiful, damn hard, increasingly useful. That’s fractals.”[11] The general consensus is that theoretical fractals are infinitely self-similar, iterated, and detailed mathematical constructs having fractal dimensions, of which many examples have been formulated and studied in great depth.[2][3][4] Fractals are not limited to geometric patterns, but can also describe processes in time.[1][5][12] Fractal patterns with various degrees of self-similarity have been rendered or studied in images, structures and sounds[13] and found in nature,[14][15][16][17][18] technology,[19][20][21][22] art,[23][24][25] and law.[26]
and HERE IS THAT WORD AGAIN
Fractal patterns with various degrees of self-similarity
BLESSINGS
Looking from this perspective, it becomes easier to understand why this command is a considered a hinge point between the vertical and horizontal.
what we find in genesis 1-11 to me becomes, even more of a Fractal pattern of the self-similarity of evil.or as
SIN,UNCHECKED.
OR AS
with every kind of unrighteousness
Exodus 20
20:12 “Honor32 your father and your mother, that you may live a long time33 in the land34 the Lord your God is giving to you
ROMANS1
1:29 They are filled60 with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice. They are rife with61 envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility. They are gossips, 1:30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil,
disobedient to parents,
1:31 senseless, covenant-breakers,62 heartless, ruthless.
1:32 Although they fully know63 God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,64 they not only do them but also approve of those who practice th